aditya
17:21
📰 Sweating the small stuff: On 43rd GST Council meeting
The GST Council leaves weightier issues hanging fire; sets stage for more acrimony
•The GST Council, which met last Friday, could not live up to the expectations of some meaningful relief from the disastrous second wave of the pandemic. The measures unveiled were insipid, be it for the common man hoping to survive while keeping fingers crossed for a vaccination slot or a hospital bed, or businesses hurting from lockdowns, and States grappling with a cash crunch amid a scramble to purchase vaccines. Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced an elaborate amnesty scheme for small firms pending GST returns, lowered the interest levied on late payments for recent months, and extended several compliance timelines. But there is little respite for businesses with turnover of over ₹5 crore, and industry is underwhelmed. No discussion occurred on bringing fuels under GST, despite the Centre’s noises to that effect amid runaway petrol prices. Taxes on COVID essentials remain unchanged, despite States and industry pressing for waivers. Ms. Sitharaman said the subject dominated deliberations but ‘varying viewpoints’ compelled her to let a Group of Ministers pore over possibilities of rate cuts. The GoM has to report back by June 8, but the Council, constitutionally empowered to recommend special rates during a disaster, would still have to concur. Thus, no immediate relief can be expected.
•Opposition States allege that NDA-ruled States’ representatives in the Council vociferously opposed waiving the GST on COVID vaccines and drugs. Tax mavens have mooted ways to implement such cuts, so it is unfortunate that the Centre, usually so conscious of optics, came to the table with little to offer. GST breaks offered on free COVID-related imports from abroad for donation to State-approved entities, were extended to material imported on a payment basis as well. It is not clear why this had to wait for the Council — BJP-ruled Gujarat and Haryana have already offered GST refunds on such imports. A ₹1.58-lakh crore borrowing plan may quell States’ concerns about immediate compensation dues, but larger schisms are apparent that could fray the Council’s functioning further after recent acrimonious parleys. Sikkim, for instance, has demanded that it be allowed to levy its own cess to cope with falling revenues, a demand that has been backed by others, including Tamil Nadu and Arunachal Pradesh. This could virtually derail the very edifice of GST subsuming all local levies, even as States now want to be recompensed beyond next year. The Centre, facing flak for its handling of the second wave, could do with a more responsive approach. Winning an intellectual or ideological battle over taxes on COVID essentials is meaningless at this precarious time, when each day’s delay in providing relief hurts thousands. Small gestures with limited revenue implications would give the Centre more room to strike common ground with States on the challenges that loom over the GST regime.
📰 Holding leaders to account
Any regime which demonises critical voices against it does a great disservice to the idea of politics
•From the first COVID-19 wave to the second, certain things have remained predictably consistent in India. First, the governments at the Centre and in different States have displayed their incapacities. Second, the party in power has constantly asked everyone to ‘refrain from playing politics’ while we are in the midst of a pandemic. While this sounds good in the first instance, repeated requests to ‘refrain from playing politics’ nudges us to examine the reasons behind such posturing.
Meaning of politics
•And that takes us to the question, what is politics all about? Unlike the popular myth, politics is not only about what happens in Assemblies and Parliament. It should also not to be perceived as a dirty word signifying the lust for power or the route to meeting personal ambitions. An important element of politics is government formation, but more significant in a democratic set up is to keep creating avenues for civic engagement. It is through such avenues that informed citizens are able to fulfil their duty as well as right to question the very government they elected. Successful government formation or peaceful transition of power from one political outfit to another is not the end of politics. Vigilant citizens should be able speak directly on a platform or through an association or the existing Opposition about their concerns. During an unprecedented crisis such as the one we are facing now, sharing fears, trauma and anxieties through a medium also occupies a space in the approved hamper of politics and political activities. Any government which begins denigrating or demonising such critical voices against it is actually doing a great disservice to the very idea of politics. It forgets that it is the electors who occupy the central rostrum in a democracy and not the elected.
•History has taught us that whenever regimes have felt that they are no longer in control of the mess they created, their first approach is to shift the goalposts. Thus, ‘please don’t play politics’ is the only weapon in their hands. In the last eight weeks, an overwhelming number of people have needed hospital beds, oxygen support or basic life-saving drugs, but only thousands have been lucky to have them. Thousands of families have lost their loved ones due to the unavailability of a live-saving instrument or drug. They have suffered the agony of being unable to attend burials or cremations of their near and dear ones. Hundreds of bodies have been found floating in different river streams in north India.
Dismissing concerns
•Members of the Opposition, civil society groups and hundreds of doctors and healthcare professionals flagged concerns about the huge lacunae in health infrastructure much before the second wave began. Their concerns were ridiculed and dismissed. A government which was not able to deal with its own inferiority complex was quick to parade ministers and spokespersons to label all those voices as ‘political’. The regime must remember that pain and grief are two enduring emotions. The mismanagement of the pandemic has resulted in lakhs of grieving families in India. Though important, routine press conferences informing people that the recovery rate is high or that the positivity rate is going down are no soothing balm to the families who have lost their loved ones not just to the virus but to the lack of facilities which could have saved them. When grieving families are interviewed, they don’t blame the virus for their irreparable loss but the apathy and callousness of the government.
•The French sociologist Alain Touraine once said that the political class is becoming increasingly alien to the people. This is true of the government of the day. Our constitutional arrangement is such that the government is accountable to the people. The government’s disdain for people raising critical issues about the mismanagement of the crisis makes it clear that the leader of the regime does not think of “We the people...” but instead thinks, “I am the people”.
